Mikhal's fun in France
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Wow I thought Winter Break was hard to describe in a blogspot, Spring Break should be about twice that, as it's twice as long! I will do my best though to be detailed, for those who are interested =). If you're not, I won't be offended if you don't read the whole book (all of which I will not be able to write tonight). To summarize, we are now on city number 5 out of 6, which happens to be Prague, in the Czech Republic. I am up at 3 am my time to register for classes, and wait for Jen to register as well. I'm getting ahead of myself though, I suppose I should "start at the very beginning, a very good place to start" (yes, I have seen the Sound of Music 3 times in the past week, on consecutive nights nonetheless, and no, I am not sick of it yet!)
So, we arrived in Nice Friday night after a long train ride. It was made a bit shorter though by a German girl named Nina with whom I spoke for most fo the ride! She spoke fluent French, and pretty good English as well, but we spoke in French for a good 3 hours! She even stuck with us through the Paris metro to change train stations, despite a slight delay involving Jen's ring being temporarily in the bottom of a dirty-Paris-train station-trash can. She was a lot of fun to talk to. It was surprising to me to meet a European who was so open on the first encounter. That is very unusual for a French person, so perhaps that is a difference between the French and Germans. Or perhaps that has just happened to be my experience the few times that I have met other German students studying in Nantes. We talked about the Sound of Music, stereotypes, being far from home for long periods of time, and what we thought of studying in France.
We arrived in Nice to a hostel worker who was so impressed and astonished to meet Americans who spoke French that he offered us free wine! Saturday we spent most of the day walking around Nice, which is a truly beautiful city. The rocky beaches and bright colors against the blue sky were stunning. Besides the added Mediterranean coast and brighter colored buildings, there were many other differences we noticed in Southern France. The people seemed a bit more easy-going, not always so hurried, and the accent was even noticable to me, the foreigner!
Sunday we spent more time walking around and saw the Passion of Christ, quite a powerful Palm Sunday experience. I was surprised by the graphics, but encouraged that it seems to stick pretty close to the gospels, and is getting more people talking about Jesus. Monday we went to Monoco (only a 20 minute train ride from Nice) with a guy from Wisconsin we met at the hostel. We saw Monte Carlo Casino there and the gardens surrounding, not to mention quite a few pretty incredible cars parked outside. We walked along quite a bit of coast, and spent the afternoon on the beach. After Monoco we grabbed some grocers, made dinner, and took the 8 pm night train out of Nice to Venice! I was a little worried about my first night-train experience, but we managed to get a compartment to ourselves, so even though we didn't have couchette tickets, we actually did have room to stretch out and sleep for the night without being disturbed.
We were a bit surprised by our accomodations in Venice. We stayed in what they call a "house-tent" which is really just an incredibly small mobile building that really might as well have been a real tent, but it was fun nonetheless. We only had one full day in Venice anyway, so we tried to spend as much time in town as possible. Venice really was as charming as I have always pictured it to be. I was amazed by the narrowness of the walkways, which is exaggerated by the lack of roads, as the canals serve as their mode of transportation on the island. Venice has a great Italian homey feel, despite the tourists.
I'll have to save the rest for later, but there's the first two cities worth of news! Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm safe and enjoying break. Hope all is well back home, I'd love to hear from all of you!
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Mid-terms are finally over, and I leave tomorrow for an incredible and crazy spring break! I'm going with two other IES gals (Anne-Tiphaine Mills and Jen Stoa) to Nice, Venice, Salzburg, Vienna, Prague, and Berlin!!! It's gonna be crazy fun and I'm super excited! I'm not bringing my cell phone on the trip, but will have e-mail access once in a while. If anyone urgently needs to get ahold of me, my Dad has the numbers of the hostels I'll be at and the other girls' cell phone #s. Hopefully there won't be any emergencies while I'm gone and I'll be able to post new blogs once in a while to let you know what's going on!
People at Luther I just have to say that you better be enjoying spring there b/c as much as it's awesome to be here and the warmth is wonderful, I still miss spring at Luther! ...Muddy frisbee, hanging out on the library lawn, sleeping on the grass between Towers and Baker, I even miss going stircrazy in class b/c it looks so beautiful outside (although I guess I do that here too).
I gave my host family this week a copy of the Sound of Music in French (La Mélodie du bonheur)... my host mom and dad have never seen it!!! Can you believe that!? I told them they could picture me there when I'm in Salzburg =). I have two classes to go today and then I'm off, so the stircraziness is definately kicking in right about now. I'm hoping I don't forget all the French I've learned when I'm gone! We are in Nice for 3 days over break though, so that cuts down on the time spent outside of France.
I guess the news from this week isn't too much different, just that it's getting warmer here and it's great! Gymnastics is even more fun now that I have my grips, and it's fun to be able to do more and more stuff again each time I go... it comes back pretty quick! Hopefully violin and guitar will be the same when I get back, after having spent all this time w/o them! Well it's time for lunch and class. Know that I love you all and wish you all a wonderful 2 1/2 weeks if I don't happen to post until after break =).
